replacing a HDD in Windows 10 - but drive shows up 'unallocated'

[pcuser94]

I’ve had a smart warning on my 2TB drive for several months, so bought a replacement (also 2TB).

I plugged it in as an external drive using a HDD USB adapter kit (external power to SATA connections, plugging into the pc on USB) so I could copy all the folders I wanted to keep to it from the failing drive.
This is something I’ve done before with the same PC successfully before, but this time, when I came to open the case and switch the drives, I boot up to find the new drive shows as unnamed and with two partitions, one RAW and the other ‘unallocated’ - I was expecting to see the same partitions as viewable when I had the drive connected as an external, and of course all the files intact.

So, I thought, I could just plug in the HDD I’d removed from the case as an external using the same adapter kit so I could start the long process of copying everything over again. To my horror, this drive now shows up unnamed and unallocated with no partitions (previously it had two). I don’t have another PC to test the - now external - drive that’s showing empty.

I’d be very grateful for your expert thoughts of how I might be able to resolve this.

[veeg]

Hello

Hopefully some of our members will chime in soon..

@Bruce

[pcuser94]

With thanks to a poster on another board, I’ve sorted it. For info for anyone else ever in the same bind, I opened the case and hooked up the failing disk as an internal drive again. When I booted, Win10 saw the contents of the drive again and I was able to reformat the new drive - already internal from the replacement earlier - and copy everything across once more. Certainly, if it happens again, I’ll do the same - connect the new drive internally, NOT through the USB kit, to format and copy across the files on the disk it will replace.